


smoke, peppermint, and tomorrows

by lovealarm



Category: JO1 (Japan Band), Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: Angst? kinda, M/M, cry ur heart out, inspired by retrograde amnesia, keigo forgets junki everyday but junki still keeps coming back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:34:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22894150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovealarm/pseuds/lovealarm
Summary: keigo has forgotten all there is to junki—he doesn’t remember how he has fallen in love with him, doesn’t remember their memories together, doesn’t remember how junki has loved him.there is no past—and no future—for them, but junki still tries.
Relationships: Kawanishi Takumi/Sato Keigo, Kono Junki/Sato Keigo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	smoke, peppermint, and tomorrows

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by retrograde amnesia i am so in love with that fic.

keigo pours himself a cup of coffee, already hating the smell as the mug touches his lips. he forces himself to swallow the bitter and scalding liquid down, feeling it burn his throat. 

he notices that the room’s stark white, the ceiling abnormally high which gives keigo the feeling of being imprisoned in a box. he hates being trapped, and even more of this dreariness— but this is the price he has to pay, just an endless and vicious cycle of all the things that he hates but can’t remember why.

he sits on a kitchen stool, nerves jittery from the single cup of coffee that had entered his system. he’s not usually like this, but then again, he doesn’t remember long enough to know. something catches his line of sight, and his gut tells him it’s important. that it’s needed to  _ remember. _

he picks up the leather bound journal lying on the kitchen desk, its pages dog-eared and worn out with the familiar feeling of a warm hand and flowy ink. he looks at the date on his phone, the 4th of October— no events planned— and thumbs through the journal, memories turned into poetry turned into a nagging reminder. 

the first few pages of the journal are written in colorful ink, lopsided letters forming sentences filled with excitement, but as he advances through the journal, he sees the way his life had slowly crumbled into pieces, it has become orderly, neat, straight lines that’s first been penciled down before writing with the darkest hue in the color wheel.  _ he’s mocking himself _ , keigo thinks. a sign of a shattered glass trying to pick itself back together, fooling itself that everything is going to be  _ dandy  _ and  _ alright. _

there lies a paradox in his journal, a polaroid of a man, sunshine kissing his demeanor and a smile on his eyes. it’s a good look for him, but keigo doesn’t understand what he has to do with this stranger. 

striped washi tape holds the portrait in place, and written in colorful ink with a handwriting he can’t recognize was, “his name is kono junki. it’s best that you avoid him.” this sparked the curiosity inside him, and wills himself to  _ remember _ , and it’s this process of trying that deflates him like a balloon every day.

he thumbs the picture carefully, sizing up the man in the cross of reality and fantasy, and he accidentally brushes the ink, smudging the pages. then he discovers that it’s freshly written, someone trying to erase himself from all of keigo’s tomorrows. but it’s understandable, because keigo wouldn’t want to be with himself too.

nevertheless, his chest still clenches, and he doesn’t know why tears slam his face suddenly, knocking him off guard until he falls down to the foot of his kitchen desk crying over a man who he doesn’t even  _ remember _ .

it seems what the mind cannot do, the heart does instead. like a give and take. while his mind loses track of the arrangement of elements, the hormones, of the emotions it secreted, his heart jots it down, storing it for safekeeping until the right moment.

he puts a hand toward his hand, steadying his breath, rejecting the memories that had been kept for him. he inhales, and then exhales, until the fumes of the past leaves his body. 

_ knock. knock. knock _ . the sound gets louder and louder until it pisses keigo off and makes him stand on his knees, with only anger fueling him.

keigo swings the door open, and he notices the grim look on his eyes, the scent of peppermint trying to mask the pack of cigarettes that he finished earlier.

still, his gaze flickers to the melanin of his skin, the angle of his jaw, his face which seemed to be too proportionate to not have undergone the knife, and after examining all this, his memory still wavers. the entirety of this man doesn’t hold any weight in his mind, and so keigo wants to scream, to ask who he is and why he’s here, but there’s a sense of familiarity to the smile that contradicts his eyes who seem to bear nothing but pain, and he’s drawn in like a fish to bait. 

something wants to be expelled from his system, blocking the passageway of his air, until the man extends a courteous hand, introducing himself as junki. the name feels like it should’ve struck a chord somewhere, should’ve played like a symphony with the strings of his heart but it didn’t.

instead there’s only this uneasiness he feels, lungs stuffed with water dragging him down. he’s just moments away from calling the police until the cogs of his brain started to turn again, and he remembers the journal entry.

he can breathe again, a heavy weight lifted off from his chest. but he’s on alert, taking a weary step back that junki took as an invitation inside his home. “why are you here?” it’s the first thing that escapes his lips. not a  _ hello _ , not  _ who are you _ , but a hostile statement that struck like an arrow in junki’s heart.

“do you remember me?” he says hesitantly, but keigo can detect the glimmer of surprise and what seems like  _ hope _ in his voice. for some reason, despite the heartache, he wants to make junki happy. to make his days just full of peppermint and stop the wisps of smoke from enveloping him.

junki’s eyes darts towards the journal on the table, and squints to see the page where keigo last left opened. an understanding resonates in him, pulling out all the hope—  _ i remember you _ — implanted by the crude question that left keigo’s lips.

keigo feels parched, and suddenly he wants more coffee even if he deems it the vilest thing in the planet that could’ve ever been invented. 

“you’re kono junki, the man that i should avoid.” and he wants to add  _ you wrote it yourself _ , that he wanted to erase himself from keigo’s memory that restarts everyday.

junki chuckles, and ruffles keigo’s head like a younger brother. it made him feel confused, but his heart lurches, wanting to be cradled by him.

“don’t take it personally, i’m just saving you.” 

and this makes keigo curious, because it was his nature to be open and to  _ love _ , and it’s not him to cast aside a shattered soul. he’d willingly sacrifice a part of himself to see another person’s glimmer shine again.

then again, why does he need saving? “and why is that so?” he’s defying the strings of fate, refusing to kill whatever semblance of will he has and succumb to the concern, to the  _ warmness _ in junki. 

“because the mind can forget whenever it wants, but the heart retains. it retains and it’ll make you cry in the middle of a happy moment, because you’re going to remember a blurred fragment of me, a face that you can’t pinpoint and you’ll feel troubled because  _ why the fuck are you crying for someone that you can’t remember _ ? if there’s no memory to hold on to then why does the heart still ache? i want to save you from that keigo. because you deserve someone who’ll be there when the day restarts for you, not someone who’s running from his own clock.” junki says the last sentence with a hushed whisper, and he grabs one of the hands that keigo has folded up into his arms and laces it into his— two victims of the same crooked fate. keigo’s gaze lands on their intertwined fingers, it seems odd to lock hands with a stranger but it felt just right with him. keigo’s heat is balanced by the neutrality of junki then finally, keigo gives himself up, resting himself into the crook of junki’s shoulder.

lying on junki’s side he decided that smoke and peppermint is his favorite scent and he can bask in it forever— if time allows them. 

sunshine finds its way to the young pair; their shadows grow longer and the silence shorter until keigo shifts his position, thinking before he speaks because that’s the way he is, “are you dying?” junki’s adam's apple bobs up and down, time standing still until he finally finds the right words to describe the situation.

he takes a deep breath, trying to explain years worth of promises and wishes in layman’s terms, to expound on what tomorrow is and how it’s never going to exist for them, because keigo’s just a misalignment of cogs and screws. 

“no and yes at the same time because physically, i’m not dying, but it’s also an affirmative because the world is fucked up and it’ll turn faster, taking your time away from you one rotation at a time, the days setting into the nights until the line separating it blurs into darkness and you’re permanently erased from this world. from everyone’s memories.” he stops, and it’s an explosion of words and feelings but it’s just never  _ enough _ .

keigo can relate all too much, but he knows that he won’t be able to remember this conversation tomorrow— junki realizes it too, and this is an ongoing cycle which hurts the both of them, because junki shows up everyday in keigo’s doorstep, fully-armored only to be stripped bare by the presence of keigo.

“then what clock are you running away from?”

junki sighs. it seems to hang around the air, but junki has already learned not to blame keigo for forgetting. 

junki taps on the identification card clipped to the pocket of his dress shirt. visitor, it reads. “where are you going?” junki’s afraid that keigo’s amnesia is getting worse.

“don’t you notice your surroundings?” keigo looks around, sees the sunlight being filtered by the venetian blinds, the bluntness of everything but it still doesn’t click.

“i’m not going anywhere.” he squeezes keigo’s hands, “i’ve already reached my destination.” he takes keigo in for a hug, so tight that it seemed like he feared that any second keigo would disappear from his sight.

keigo doesn’t hear the “i love you” that got lost in the sentiment, instead he’s mute, waiting for the words that’ll break him.

“i’m visiting you, keigo. you’re in a sanctuary because the doctors think that you’re a—“ he chokes on his words, because he can’t believe that any person that holds pride in their profession would use the term, “lost cause, and all they can do is to prevent your condition from worsening.” 

“what?” he snarls, and keigo thinks that this is some sick joke; that the note this man left should’ve served as a warning for him to shove him the  _ fuck _ out the door the first time.

“you have a tumor. a big one.” he grabs the journal from the table and flips it to the page where keigo’s written about his condition.

“there’s nothing the doctors can do of it. you have anterograde and retrograde amnesia, meaning anything you’ve done or you’re doing right now will be erased from your memory.”

silence. keigo tries to make the best of junki’s words, but eventually the truth slips from his lips. 

“a shell. that’s what i am. am i right?” and it hurts for junki to hear this come from keigo, it tugs his heartstrings and pulls them so far that when it comes back it snaps his heart into two. a sob hinges on junki’s throat, blaming everything on the ticking of the clock and all the machines that failed keigo. 

because before keigo was diagnosed with tumor, the future was a possibility. then he was diagnosed with amnesia, and tomorrow became the thing of the past and junki has to live in agony trying to understand the fact that keigo would never remember the moments they shared, that he won’t even remember his  _ name _ .

keigo shouts at him, grabbing junki’s collar by the fistfuls in retaliation to the fact that fate has decided to play with his life. he hits junki on his chest, each blow a cruel reminder that keigo deems himself a stranger, that the him that junki knew will never come back but junki takes in all the pain, because he thinks that he’s to blame and that he’s never been just  _ there _ and he’s never lit the stars in keigo’s soul when he had a chance. he goes through this every few days, but never gets used to it so he forces himself to look up at the ceiling because keigo’s tear-stricken face makes it even harder to be strong. 

junki doesn’t understand why he won’t spare the both of them pain. he holds the key to keigo’s freedom, so he can just live without a care, without pain, so why can’t he just severe it? he picks up a different colored pen from a stationery store every day, telling himself that today is the day he stops running. that today he’s not going to bargain with the death reaper anymore for some more time; so when keigo falls asleep from exhaustion, he rips open the entry he wrote from the previous day, tapes a new polaroid of himself— junki’s way of updating keigo about himself— with washi, and writes something about himself. sometimes it’s a passage, but most of the time it’s just him introducing himself in third person, telling keigo to stay away from him. because he’s nothing but heartbreak and bad luck. 

and today’s another cycle, just a game restarting itself and today he promises yet again to leave, to let keigo be in peace, so he writes. every stroke that he writes contradicts with himself, a paradox inside a paradox. he wants to write of the galaxy they shared. of how much keigo loved hip hop, that he lived and breathed it. of the way he grew shy, head upright but his stare wavering. of how much he loves keigo to the point that he’ll be willing to give everything up for him, but instead he writes—“this is kono junki, if he comes to your door this morning tell him to leave. he’s nothing but pain, and you’d be better off without him.”

and because this is an endless and vicious cycle that none of them can manage to quit, junki shows up the next day, peppermint masking the smoke, a grim look on his eyes, while keigo takes a wary step back, an angry scowl marring his delicate features, shouting to leave him the  _ fuck _ alone. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> follow me @princekeigos on twitter💜🤲🏻 please leave a kudos if u like it & lmk ur thoughts!


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